The invention relates to an audio stream network with network components, wherein the network components comprise at least one source device and a plurality of receiving devices, wherein the network components are connected with a network connection, wherein the network connection is using the internet protocol, wherein the source device is adapted to provide an audio stream, wherein the receiving devices are adapted to receive one or more audio streams from at least one of the source devices.
Streaming of high bandwidth audio streams using the internet protocol on an Ethernet network is common practice. Such streams originate at a source and ends up at a sink. Such streams often carry multiple audio channels in order to be efficient.
The document EP 29 39 384 A1, which seems to be the closest state of the art, discloses an audio stream arrangement comprising a plurality of audio devices, whereby each audio device is adapted to provide an audio stream and whereby each audio device comprises an audio device network interface for transmitting its audio stream over a network, a control device, whereby the control device is adapted to send a command over the network to any of the audio devices to set the audio device in an active state, whereby the audio devices in the active state transmits its audio stream over the network, a processing device for processing the audio stream from the active audio device, whereby the processing device comprises a processing device network interface for receiving the audio stream from the network and mixing unit with a plurality of input channels and output channels, whereby each input channel can be assigned to an audio stream from one active audio device and whereby the mixing unit is operable to mix the audio stream from the plurality of input channels into a common audio stream and to output the common audio stream to the output channel, wherein the audio stream from the active audio device to the processing device are transmitted by a multicast transmission.